This HIV Adoption Audioconference is the follow up to our Paving a Road Home webinar and is available here. While the webinar has been very successful in introducing families and adoption professionals to HIV+ adoption, we know that many individuals have additional questions which we hope to address here.
The conference features a panel of healthcare providers and program staff from the CHIP clinic in Denver, Colorado. CHIP is the pediatric HIV clinic located at the Children’s Hospital in Denver, Colorado. CHIP’s mission is to lead in the provision of innovative, client-centered care, research and prevention programs that improve the health and quality of life for children, youth, young adults, pregnant women and families living with or affected by HIV, or at risk for HIV infection.
Meet our panel:
Emily Barr is a pediatric nurse practitioner and a certified nurse midwife who has worked with families living with HIV for 20 years. She has been with the CHIP clinic for 9 years and worked in pediatric and maternal HIV clinics in Syracuse, New York and New Haven, Connecticut prior to coming to Denver, Colorado. She follows a caseload of perintally infected infants through adolescents as well as a population of HIV-infected pregnant women and their HIV-exposed infants. Emily is very active in Pediatric and Maternal HIV research on both the national and international levels. She also happens to be a mother of 5 children – two who were adopted from Ethiopia. She started the Rocky Mountain Ethiopian Adoption Group and is a board member of From HIV to Home and Advisor to Ethiopian Orphan Relief.
Jennifer Dunn has been a Family Nurse Practitioner at the CHIP clinic for the past 2 years. She works with a range of CHIP patients including infected children and their parents, as well as pregnant women and their HIV-exposed infants. Jennifer received her undergraduate and graduate nursing training at the University of Colorado.
Jessica Forsyth holds a Masters in Social Work and is the program manager with CHIP. Prior to moving to Denver in 2005, Jessica was the Associate Director of Project ARK, a comprehensive HIV care and prevention program, in St. Louis, Missouri. She was also the founder and coordinator of Health and Education for Youth and Young Adults (HEY), a Project ARK adolescent program. HEY was named as model program by the federal government in 2001. Jessica is the co-chair of the Ryan White HIV Title I Planning Council in Denver. She is also adjunct faculty for the University of Denver’s School of Social Work.
Lora Trevis is a licensed clinical social worker and has been working with the CHIP program for 6 years. Her patient caseload includes all perinatally infected children, from birth to 20 years old, and their families. She provides case management services including access to medical care, medications, crisis intervention, insurance, referrals to the community and support around HIV specific issues. Among the issues she helps families deal with are development, disclosure, adherence and transitioning to adolescence.
Here are direct links to the websites mentioned during the conference:
CHIP Clinic at The Children’s Hospital in Denver, Colorado
http://thechildrenshospital.org/conditions/immune/index.aspx
A Positive Adoption – a CHIP resource
http://apositiveadoption.wordpress.com/
About the Ryan White Program
http://hab.hrsa.gov/aboutus.htm
AIDS Alliance
http://www.aids-alliance.org/
